Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Brunswick County Board of Education heard once more from a local resident who advocates teaching the Hebrew creation myth in public schools. From the State Port Pilot:

Although hesitant to re-open discussions right now, Brunswick County school board members have not yet closed the book on creationism in the classroom.During the public address portion of its meeting Thursday, the board of education heard once again from parent Joel Fanti, who reiterated his argument that creationism, a Biblical account of the origin of life, be taught in addition to evolution. Fanti first approached the board with the issue in September.But since his first appearance, Fanti said he now understood the myriad reasons why school board members would have a difficult time adding Creationism to the science course catalog — the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) could cite the district for not following state standards, among others.Instead, Fanti asked the board to consider integrating creationism into a social science like world history. Under NCDPI guidelines, Creationism cannot be introduced into the standard course of study but can be taught from a cultural perspective in history and elective classes.

The board sort of waffled with the issue, neither sending Mr. Fanti packing or signing on to his ideas. Hopefully, they were just being polite, but I'm afraid past history argues against that.

I won't get into the creationism vs. intelligent design vs. evolution argument because it can't be won. Those who believe the biblical story of creation can't be argued from their views with scientific evidence. That's not the nature of faith. On the other hand, atheistic evolutionary biologists will never see the hand of God in the development of life for the same reason. Theirs is faith of a different kind, but faith none the less.

I think what all sides should agree on is that the public schools should not be dabbling in religious education. The left will see it as unconstitutional, of course, but the faithful should be just as opposed.

Do you really want the people responsible for today's education system teaching your kids about religion? If they do as good a job with God as they do with history, literature, mathematics and science, we'll end up graduating a bunch of atheists.

Keeping faith and government at arms' length is really a protection for the faithful.